I am a labor economist by training, and focus on labor, health, other applied micro topics, as well as empirical political economy. I received my BA in Economics and MA in Development Policy from Stanford University, and my Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago. Prior to joining UMass, I held a Research Economist position at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at University of California, Berkeley.
Articles
Does Outsourcing Reduce Wages in the Low-Wage Service Occupations? Evidence from Janitors and Guards (with Ethan Kaplan), Industrial & Labor Relations Review (2010)
Outsourcing of labor services grew substantially during the 1980s and 1990s and was associated with...
Coups, Corporations, and Classified Information (with Ethan Kaplan and Suresh Naidu), Law and Economics Workshop (2008)
We estimate the impact of political coups and top-secret coup planning on asset prices. We...
The Economic Effects of a Citywide Minimum Wage (with Suresh Naidu and Michael Reich), Industrial & Labor Relations Review (2007)
This paper presents the first study of the economic effects of a citywide minimum wage—San...
Other
Do Frictions Matter in the Labor Market? Accessions, Separations, and Minimum Wage Effects (with T. William Lester and Michael Reich), Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (2010)
We provide the first test of the effects of U.S. minimum wages on labor market...
How Do Employers React to a Pay-or-Play Mandate? Early Evidence from San Francisco (with Carrie Hoverman Colla and William H. Dow), Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (2010)
In 2006 San Francisco adopted major health reform, becoming the first city to implement a...
Do Minimum Wages Really Reduce Teen Employment? Accounting for Heterogeneity and Selectivity in State Panel Data (with Sylvia Allegretto and Michael Reich), Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (2010)
Traditional estimates of minimum wage effects include controls for state unemployment rates and state and...
Employee Replacement Costs (with Eric Freeman and Michael Reich), Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (2010)
We investigate properties of employee replacement costs, using a panel survey of California businesses in...
Spatial Heterogeneity and Minimum Wages: Employment Estimates for Teens Using Cross-State Commuting Zones (with Sylvia Allegretto and Michael Reich), Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (2009)
Conventional approaches to estimating the effect of minimum wages on teen employment insufficiently account for...